Post-adoption behaviour of farmers towards soil and water conservation technologies of watershed management in Northern Shivalik foothills

The study was undertaken at ICAR-Indian Institute of Soil and Water Conservation Research Centre, Chandigarh from November, 2012 to June 2015 in five watersheds developed by the Centre, with the objectives to study the post-adoption behaviour of farmers regarding watershed technologies. The watersheds selected were (i) Aganpur Bhagwasi (district Patiala, Punjab), (ii) Johranpur (district Solan, Himachal Pradesh), (iii) Mandhala (district Solan, Himachal Pradesh), (iv) Kajiana (district Panchkula, Haryana), and (v) Sabeelpur (district Panchkula, Haryana). The post-adoption behaviour of 225 beneficiary farmers who adopted different Soil and Water Conservation (SWC) technologies for watershed management were studied in detail regarding their present status of continue-adoption, diffusion, dis-adoption and also technological gap. Combining the data for all the five watersheds, it was observed that 79% of the farmers continued to adopt SWC technologies even after withdrawal of the project. Twenty one percent dis-adopted the technologies and 23% were adopting with technological gap. Diffusion of adopted SWC technologies also occurred, and 16% of SWC technologies were diffused to other farmers ’fields in nearby areas for natural resource conservation on watershed basis. The analysis revealed that the adoption and spreading of SWC practices is not a technical problem that can only be solved by research, but also a socio-cultural and economic problem, with many constraints playing a role.